Category: issues

“The New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts is the shining star of the state’s largest city, something that works in a place that has lots of things that don’t. … What NJPAC, as it is known, doesn’t have is a neighborhood, but it has the land and a plan, and that’s where Philadelphia developer Carl Dranoff comes in.”

Time was, an archaeology professor (Indiana Jones) could be the hero of an entire action movie franchise. “If those films were released today, I wonder if some Hollywood producer would insist that the Jones boys be changed from professors to executives at a private treasure-salvaging company. The idea that liberal-arts lovers can be heroes seems even more antiquated than the artifacts the Jones’ [sic] are after.”

“For nearly half a century, ads for Amul brand butter have stuck the knife into Indian politicians for all manner of blunders, scams and gaffes.”

“The team that produces up to six of these cartoons per week comprises just three people: Rahul daCunha, creative head of ad-agency daCunha Communications, copy writer Manish Jhaveri and Jayant Rane, the artist who has been sketching Amul cartoons for a quarter-century. Recently, The Wall Street Journal got a peek inside their operation.”

“There is a real risk that fewer and fewer schools will provide learning opportunities in the arts. The UK’s leading edge in creativity may be lost. We cannot deprive an entire generation of children of the cultural skills that they will need.”

“An austere 2013 budget has been proposed that calls for eliminating 17 staff positions, about 10 percent of the center’s jobs … Programming and advertising costs for 2013 will be reduced by roughly $2.5 million to around $3.5 million.”

The second weekend closure of the 405 freeway (the first was last year) is leading the Getty Museum and the Skirball Cultural Center to shut down for the duration. Some organizations are braver: the Hammer Museum is offering free admission for the weekend, the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble is hosting an improv series, and a group of organizations are sponsoring “Artmageddon.”

“There has to be something wrong with a major and supposedly successful pan-arts festival that guts attendance for a whole class of the host city’s arts institutions, and wallops the part of town most associated with culture. But there’s a lot wrong with the theory and practice of Cultural Olympiads.”

“Chief among these is Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela’s City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, completed in 2005 to widespread praise. Costing €1.1 billion, it nonetheless failed to provide a massive compensatory visitor influx for its price, even while beaches nearby heave with pasty North European bodies. … Meanwhile, in Galicia, Santiago de Compostela’s City of Culture, which opened last year, has also signaled an end to the era of look-at-me public projects.”

Among the top winners of Australia’s annual performing arts prizes were the Australian premiere of Jake Heggie’s opera based on Melville’s novel, DV8 Physical Theatre’s Can We Talk About This?, Syndey Theatre Company’s Gross und Klein (starring Blanchett), and Opera Australia’s staging of La traviata on Sydney Harbour.